A Sports Side Project

Following American sports is a challenge in Ireland, particularly without access to a television and satellite package. The time difference makes most American primetime games too late to watch live, and there is a certain sadness about watching a replay of a game early the next morning, with coffee and pajamas instead of beer and branded hoodie.

American sports information has to be sought out more deliberately, more than I thought it would. I can’t simply turn on the radio in the morning to hear all the baseball and American football scores and highlights from the night before. Instead, I hear GAA club names spoken more quickly than I can understand and jokes that I don’t get about Manchester and Swansea and some team that goes by the name “Harlequins.”

Press Start

What has helped keep me engaged with the sports of my home country has been the launch of a fun American sports/retro video game project with my good friend Bob. We call it Sticky Bleachers.

We started the video series with the 2015 NBA Finals, simulated on NBA Live ’96 for Sega Genesis (Mega Drive) with current team rosters hacked in. We developed a system to record commentary over the games as if we were live in the digital 16-bit stadium.

Since the NBA Finals, we’ve covered other sports…and even sports entertainment, like this call of a middling pro wrestling card on WWF Wrestlemania for Super NES.

As the American football NFL season nears the end of the regular season, we are covering one game each week with the NES classic Tecmo Super Bowl with today’s rosters hacked in.

If you care to follow this retro game nerd project, follow Sticky Bleachers and get in touch on Twitter and Facebook, and subscribe to our channel on YouTube to get each and every game delivered directly to your notifications box.